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CULTURE|SCIENCE|POLITICS|HUMOR

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comparison to political, military, diplomatic

and economic affairs, but the catalog of key

episodes is long. We must not forget that the

European conquest and settlement of the

Americas were largely dependent on the

deadly diseases the settlers brought; or that

the grand plan of the Continental Congress to

conquer Quebec in 1775 was halted, in large

part, by a fearful smallpox outbreak among

the troops; or that more American soldiers

died from influenza during World War I than

from battle wounds, in a pandemic that killed

upward of 50 million people world-wide.

It takes the fear of a pandemic, as we are

experiencing today with Covid-19, to remind

us that infectious diseases were once so com-

mon, so deadly, that Americans had little

choice but to accept the toll they exacted

with stoicism and dread. Death by epidemic

remained a natural, if depressing, part of

American life until just a few generations ago.

Take yellow fever, for example. A virus

transmitted by the bite of the femaleAedes

aegyptimosquito, with a mortality rate some-

times approaching 50%, it came to the Ameri-

cas on slave ships from Africa. As trade

routes expanded, it reached the port cities of

North America, striking Philadelphia, the

young nation’s capital, in 1793, where it killed

at least 10% of the population and caused the

federal government to temporarily disband.

Most of Congress fled the city, as did Presi-

dent George Washington and Secretary of

State Thomas Jefferson, an ardent defender

Pleaseturntothenextpage

Gerard Baker

onthepoliticization

ofapandemicC2

Gerald F. Seib

onthelessonsof2008,

thelastcrisisofour

institutionsC3

Neil Shubin

ontheviralDNAinside

allofusC3

Deadly infectious diseases were once common in

the U.S., until science conquered them. In today’s crisis,

it’s worth recalling those celebrated victories.

By David Oshinsky

When Epidemics

Wreaked Havoc

In America

Children on line to receive the newly

invented polio vaccine, April 1955.

Jonas Salk’s vaccine

eradicated polio

within a generation.

Prof. Oshinsky is a member of the history

department at New York University and

director of the Division of Medical

Humanities at NYU Langone Health. His

book “Polio: An American Story” won the

2006 Pulitzer Prize for history.

I

t may have been the high pointof America’s fragile love af-

fair with medical science. “SALK’S VACCINE WORKS,”

screamed the nation’s headlines on April 12, 1955. “POLIO IS

CONQUERED.” An insidious childhood disease that came like

clockwork each summer during the middle years of the 20th

century, killing thousands and crippling many more, would be

all but eradicated in the U.S. within a single generation.

Rarely, if ever, had a scientist received the instant adula-

tion that awaited Jonas Salk. Tributes piled up, including the

Congressional Gold Medal, awarded previously to the likes of Thomas

Edison, Charles Lindbergh and General George C. Marshall. The Eisen-

hower White House circulated a memo suggesting a Rose Garden cer-

emony for maximum political gain: “We’ve [got to] show that the

president is just as interested as [Franklin D. Roosevelt] in polio...to

take away the perennial Democratic thunder.” Yet those who wit-

nessed the event were touched by its simple humanity. “No bands

played and no flags waved,” wrote a reporter who had followed Eisen-

hower for years. “But nothing could have been more impressive than

this grandfather standing there and tell-

ing Dr. Salk in a voice trembling with

emotion, ‘I have no words to thank you.

I am very, very happy.’”

New vaccines soon followed—for mea-

sles, mumps and rubella. Coupled with

earlier laboratory miracles, including the

introduction of antibiotics like penicillin

and streptomycin, Americans saw a huge

jump in their life expectancy, driven by

the precipitous decline of infectious dis-

eases. The war against germs, it ap-

peared, had become a rout.

The impact of disease on American

history is a remarkably understudied

subject. Textbooks give it short shrift in

Ben Zimmer

ontheoriginsofthe

word‘panic’C5

The Virus Crisis